Openreach to Hit Quarterly UK FTTP Broadband Build Rate of 1m Premises

Openreach (BT) are expecting to reach a record peak quarterly build rate on their new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network of 1 million premises passed in Q4 FY24 (i.e. end of March 2024), which is up from the 860K seen in Q2 (Sept 2023). Commercial build costs are also said to still be below £300 per premises.

The latest forecast marks a welcome return to their original trajectory, particularly after the operator suffered a notable build slowdown through the first half of 2023, which came after they adjusted their deployment plan to focus on making cost savings at the end of 2022 (here).

The rollout has so far already covered well over 12.5 million UK premises (inc. 3.6m homes in the hardest to reach rural areas) and is currently running at a build rate of over 60,000 premises per week. Some 4.2 million customers have also adopted the service via various partner ISPs (35k new orders every week), which gives the operator a strong take-up rate of 33% and rising.

The forecast suggests that Openreach expects to add a total of 3.5 million premises to their FTTP coverage across the 2024 financial year, which they predict will rise to 4 million in FY25. The per premises build costs are expected to stay within their £250 to £350 model for at least this period / next two years (currently it’s below £300). Interestingly, it’s noted that the provisioning unit cost of a new FTTP install (e.g. to your home) is also c. £300.

Admittedly, it’s not all good news, with the BT Group recently reporting (here) that Openreach’s total broadband lines (copper and fibre) had declined from 21.457 million in FY23 H2 to 21.202m in FY24 H1, as rivals take a bite out of their base (mostly from their copper lines). But the latest forecast also noted that Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) has grown 8.8% year-on-year in H1 2024, which is offsetting the line losses (note: FTTP is delivering an ARPU of £16.86 per month, vs £15.61 on FTTC and £9.5 on ADSL).

The latest data includes some other useful statistics, such as the fact that they’re now seeing 62% migration of lines to FTTP within 3 years of the new network going live (a faster take-up rate than they expected) or 50% within just 20 months. Churn on FTTP is also roughly half what it is on their older hybrid fibre FTTC lines of equivalent age – after 36-months churn on FTTC is c.12%, while on FTTP it’s 6%. The following chart also shows how rapidly take-up grows depending on how long the network has been present and live.

In addition, 29% of orders take their fastest broadband tiers (500Mbps+) and FTTP fault rates are, on average, coming in 60% lower than on “copper broadband” lines (unclear if this also factors FTTC). FTTP also suffered from significantly fewer faults than “copper broadband” during recent storm periods. The storm related increase in fault reports on copper broadband lines was c.10%, while on FTTP it was less than 1%.

Finally, Openreach reaffirmed their intention to “continue building post December 2026 – right across the UK“, although it remains unclear exactly how far beyond the 25 million mark they will actually go (they’ve only said 25-30m, which is quite a wide margin). We strongly suspect they may wait until after Ofcom’s next market review to confirm.

On the other hand, Openreach has said that their capital expenditure will reduce by at least £1bn per annum after December 2026, while at the same time their “build pace will reduce to c.1m premises passed per annum” in this same period. In that sense, it seems reasonable to predict that they’ll deliver c.26m premises passed by FTTP by the end of 2027 (high confidence) and possibly 28-29m by 2030 (roughly mirroring their FTTC footprint).